Join us as we liveblog the ‘Birth of the Book’ event at Essex Book Festival featuring critically acclaimed author Kerry Hudson, Literary Agent Jo Unwin and Picador Editor Francesca Main. We move on to
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This month, Kate talks about two firsts, the UKYA Blogger Awards, which are – we think – the first industry-sponsored awards for book bloggers, and the YA Book Prize, the first book prize exclusively for YA literature. Kate chats to Andy Robb, the founder of UKYABA, and Rob guests.

If you’ve been anywhere near Twitter today, you’ll know it’s International Women’s Day. There is an International Men’s Day (November 19th) but oddly, people search for that more only on 8th March – curious! Many bookish people have been sharing their favourite female authors and characters today, so I thought I’d put together a stack of books by female writers I love.

What can you do to make the world a better place?If you follow me on Twitter (I’m @magic_kitten – come and say hello!) you might have noticed me tweeting about #TeamNice. If you want to know all the details, head over to http://www.teamnicehq.com but – long story short – this was a hashtag inspired by a customised necklace and a desire to spread more positivity on social media, to counteract the outrage and keyboard warriors. This snowballed into a Month of Kindness throughout February, with a suggested ‘small act of kindness’ for each day of the month.

Those eagle-eyed people in the Hodder marketing department (who kindly had me pop in for a couple of weeks interning before Christmas) did spot the hashtag and have joined #TeamNice with a small act of kindness of their own. One Small Act of Kindness, the new novel from Lucy Dillon, will be published in April this year, but I was lucky enough to get a sneak peak while I was in the office. They’ve kindly provided a copy for me to give away here as we bring our Month of Kindness to a close. If you like the sound of it from my review, I’d love you to enter and become part of #TeamNice too!

Lara’s life is far from perfect, but being an upbeat kind of person she saves her venting for her diary. It’s the only place she can let out her true feelings about the family dramas and hideous bullying she has to face every day.
And then a shining light comes out of the darkness – the new, young and MALE teacher, Mr Jagger. The one person who takes Lara seriously and notices her potential. The one person who is kind to her. The one person who she falls madly and hopelessly in love with.
The one person who can never love her back…can he?

Welcome

Welcome to Adventures With Words!Here Kate and Rob share their love of books across a number of genres, along with reviews of comics, film, tv, theatre and music. We also do a weekly audio podcast alongside a monthly Young Adult edition. Find out more here.